I played a little jazz gig last week at a cool Austin steakhouse and bar, Perry’s. The photo on their site is taken from the perspective of the band which is humorous since it’s doubtful the band member’s can afford to eat there. When I arrived there was no room for a drumset so I crammed my drum stool in a corner next to the piano and played a snare drum and small cymbal. From this perch where I could easily rest my chin on the piano lid, I watched a facinating site as the evening unfolded. The darker it got, the more the room was illuminated by the ocean of smartphones whose owners were not content to leave untouched for the hour or two that they sat in the bar. At one point I counted 16 Blackberrys in action — one table of six people had four going at once. Many of these people were texting and others appeared to be browsing. I saw one guy show a woman a Youtube video of a band playing somewhere other than Perry’s. Somehow it was lost on them that live jazz was happening right in front of them while they strained to hear a compressed YouTube video of a band across cyberspace. But at least they turned their ringers off. Hallelujiah!
I snuck up on Doug banging around on a Fender Rhodes in our house one day and captured a few seconds of his improvations. That was the inspiration for this answering machine ditty. It’s still on of my favorites, and interestingly, I’ve grown to love his McCoy Tyner meets Liberache stylings. I’m thinking, maybe he DOES need to to an album.
Talk about Chicken is more post-impressionist, antediluvian than The Laundry Burglar. A large potion of these crazy answering machine messages from the early 1980s included my roomates at the time, great jazz trombonist Paul McKee and my brother, Doug Laningham. This one features Paul and I multitracking chickens doing atonal swing. Paul supplies the lovely mallet work, I play brushes on snare, and there are other things going on in the background that I now find hard to discern.
One of my great pals from Austin, Texas, Beverly Spicer, is a deep and expansive thinker, and happens to love this one. Go figure. We must be communicating something beyond what we realized at the time.
I know we pushed the boundaries of our callers’ patience with this one. I don’t remember anyone ever leaving a message after this, or making it to the beep.
I now inaugurate a new series featuring answering messages from my college years. When I bought my first answering machine around 1982 you would have thought I had scored a Tonight Show date. At least, that is how I treated it. In retrospect, I feel for all of the unfortunate ones who had to suffer through these 30-second comedy routines just to leave a message for me or my room mates.
